244 THE AMERICAN BEAVER. 



India Company exported from New Amsterdam four 

 hundred beaver skins, and thus inaugurated this trade 

 with the New World. This number had increased by 

 1635 to fourteen thousand nine hundred and eighty- 

 one. During the ten immediately previous years the 

 whole number exported was eighty thousand one hun- 

 dred and eighty-three.^ Each pelt was then worth 

 about two dollars and a quarter. The trade steadily 

 increased until the dominion of the Dutch ended, in 

 1664. Beaver pelts were then a measure of value, 

 and formed a part of the currency; and the beaver 

 himself was adopted for the central symbol in the seal 

 of the province. Their furs continued, under English 

 rule, to be the chief article of export from New York 

 until the year 1700, after which the exportation de- 

 clined rapidly, and soon became extinct. In 1687, 

 Thomas Dongan, governor of the province of New 

 York, remarks in an official letter as follows: "We 

 find this year that the revenue is very much dimin- 

 ished, for in other years we were used to ship off for 

 England thirty-five or forty thousand beavers, besides 

 peltry; this year only nine thousand and some hun- 

 dreds, peltry and all."^ Again, in November, 1700, 

 Governor Bellomont wrote to the lords of trade in 

 equally discouraging language: "The beaver trade 

 here and at Boston is sunk to little or nothing, and 

 the market is so low for beaver in England that 'tis 

 scarce worth the transporting. I have been told that 

 in one year, when this province was in possession of 

 the Dutch, there were sixty-six thousand beaver skins 

 exported from this town ; and this last year there was 



1 Natural Hist. New York, Pt. I., Zoology, p. 13. De Kay. 



2 Colonial Hist. New York, iii. 476. 



